Buried: East Marion Cemetery, East Marion, Suffolk County, New York, USA

A painting by artist Mark Rothko at the Tate Modern has been defaced by a small amount of black paint, a spokeswoman for the gallery has confirmed.

The London gallery said the painting was defaced at about 15:25 BST.

Paintings by the Modernist painter, one of America's most important post-war artists, have sold for hundreds of millions of pounds.

The gallery was shut for a short period and then reopened. Police are investigating the incident.

Source: BBC, 7th Oct. 2012

A man has claimed responsibility for defacing a
valuable mural by Mark Rothko at the Tate Modern this weekend..

Vladimir Umanets, the Russian-born founder of the Yellowism movement admitted daubing the words ‘Vladimir Umanets, A Potential Piece of Yellowism’ in black ink or paint on the bottom of one of Rothko’s Seagram paintings.

Scotland Yard immediately launched an investigation into the incident, which occurred at the Tate Modern art gallery at around 3.25pm yesterday. The force said it was looking for a white male in his late 20s.

Today Mr Umanets said he had written on the painting, but insisted his aim was not to destroy or deface it.

"Some people think I'm crazy or a vandal, but my intention was not to destroy or decrease the value, or to go crazy. I am not a vandal," he said.

"It's good people are shocking about what happened, no-one is realising what actually happened, everyone is just posting that the piece has been damaged or destroyed or defaced.

"But I believe that after a few years they will start looking for it from the right angle. So that's why I did it."

Mr Umanets, who would not reveal his age or where he lives, said he knows he is likely to be arrested, but added: "I believe that from everything bad there's always a good outcome so I'm prepared for that but obviously I don't want to spend a few months, even a few weeks, in jail. But I do strongly believe in what I am doing, I have dedicated my life to this."

He said he did not plan exactly which painting he would write on, but thinks he found "the perfect choice", and said he feels he may have increased the value.

"To be honest, I do believe I increased the value, it seems probably ridiculous for someone but I do believe in this, I didn't decrease the value, I didn't destroy this picture, I put something new."

The Tate Modern said it does not have a price for the defaced piece, but paintings by the Russian-born artist often fetch tens of millions of pounds.

A spokeswoman said: "There was an incident at Tate Modern in which a visitor defaced one of Rothko's Seagram murals by applying a small area of black paint with a brush to the painting.

That is just great. Some idiot defaces a Rothko which is there for us, mere mortals, to enjoy, and compares himself to Duchamp. .

Standing in front of a Rothko is one of the great joys in art. Now we will be moved further and further back from the work, further and further away from the great man in the name of security.

We lose out: the idiot gets publicity and his star shines.

Something is wrong.

Paul Page 8th Oct. 2012

A man has been charged with defacing a Mark Rothko painting at London's Tate Modern gallery on Sunday, Scotland Yard has said.

Wlodzimierz Umaniec, 26, a Polish national of no fixed abode, will appear at Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.

Mr Umaniec, also known as Vladimir Umanets, is charged with one count of causing criminal damage in excess of £5,000.

The artwork is a 1958 Seagram mural.

Witnesses saw a man daub the Rothko mural on Sunday afternoon before fleeing the gallery.

The Tate Modern was shut for a short period, then reopened at 15:25 BST.

The gallery said it does not have a price for the defaced piece, but paintings by the Russian-born artist often fetch tens of millions of pounds.

A spokeswoman said Tate's conservation team was assessing the damage.

Earlier this year, Rothko's Orange, Red, Yellow sold for £53.8 million - the highest price paid for a piece of post-war art at auction.

The painting went under the hammer at Christie's in New York.

Source: BBC, 9th Oct. 2012

Mark Rothko, an American Jewish painter, is chiefly known today for his huge and beautiful abstract pictures with horizontal bands of colour melting into one another. Colours that are oblique at the edges but are so deep that you can almost drown in them.

He was born in Latvia in 1903, then part of the Russian Empire, but went to America in 1913. He started painting in 1926 with a clear influence being Surrealism in his early work. It was quite different to the later work which Rothko built his reputation on, with more movement and swirling imagery.

Until 1940, he was known as Marcus Rothkovich, but because of a fear of the rise of Nazi sympathy in the US and the thought of deportation for European Jews, not only did he change it to Mark Rothko in that year but became an American citizen.

His first one-man show was at the Portland Museum in 1933 when he was 29.

He was married twice, firstly to Edith Sachar, a successful jewelry designer, and secondly to Mary Alice Beistle, an illustrator of children’s books.

His last studio at 157 East 69th Street, New York.

After suffering long-term from depresion, Rothko committed sicide in 1970 by cutting his wrists. He was 66.

As of July 2006, the record price paid for a Rothko painting is $22.5 million US dollars for Homage to Matisse.